


Alone

by cptsuke



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 07:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1258591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsuke/pseuds/cptsuke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joy Toye is alone. In Normandy. Fuck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Ive tried to get his voice vaguely sounding like Toye. (alas there isn't a whole lot of sole-focus! Toye in either the books or the show, and its freaking hard to write a bad ass with no self esteem)  
> Also Ive taken liberties with some stuff (obviously), but hopefully nothings crazily FUBAR.

  
Joe is alone.

For what seems like the first time in two years Joe is alone. 

And Jesus, how he doesn't want to be.

His whole body aches with the shock of the whole quickdrop-roughfall-hard land thing he just did, but he ignores the aching and looks up at the sky. Thinking he can maybe work out where he is from the stars, but the sky is alight with tracer bullets and the burning bodies of both paratroopers and airplanes. 

It's something he wishes he'd never seen and will never forget. 

Time to move, he realises. He's got his flick-knife, his trench knife, a chocolate bar, a .45 he's not supposed to use and what looks like most of the skin missing from elbow to wrist. 

And he is in Normandy.  
  


Joe feels safe in the dark, his face is blackened but unlike the others, with their boasts of warpaint and indians, he smeared his face with memories of dark coal shafts and pale faced outsiders who seemed to glow in the dark. 

His dirty face feels familiar and safe in the dark flooded fields.

There's noise close to him, on the other side of the hedge and he fumbles for the cricket in his pocket. It makes a loud  _click-clack_.  **Loud**. 

He listens. Theres no answering clicks and, despite how loud his cricket sounded, the rustling behind the hedge hasn't stopped. He fingers the .45, he wants to use it despite all the warning to not to use their guns unless they absolutely had to. He's not sure why this guys alone and no doubt he's got friends nearby.

Gently, quietly,  _quietly_ , he pulls his knife from his boot, it sticks slightly in its sheath but comes out without a sound. 

Joe doesn't think about what he does next, doesn't think about seeing a  ~~kid~~   _kraut_  staring wide eyed at the lit sky, doesn't think about how easily the knife goes in or how quickly,  _easily_  the guy chokes and dies, doesn't think about anything but how he now has a gun in his hand.  
  


Which he promptly drops the first time he fires. It seems quite straightforward, shoot the Krauts from out of sight and fade back into the dark. Only he gets past the first step, his gun  _brrrrrt_ s and suddenly hes being shot at by american guns and finds himself yelling 'Thunder! You sons of bitches, Thunder!' 

He throws the gun away and gets himself down a ditch and through hedgerow before they can hit him.  
  
There's paratroopers all over Normandy but, other than the ones that shot at him, the only ones Joe meets are dead. His unconscious prayer of 'please-let-none-of-them-get-hurt' has somehow warped into 'please-let-some-of-them-live.'

He pilfers an M1 from one of the  _thank god its not Easy_  bodies, and stops trying to identify them after he nearly breaks his ankle on a radio and madly scrambles for the dogtags of the dark haired trooper with a hole where his face should've been.

They are dead. There's nothing he can do for them but continue on and makes sure their brothers don't fall like they have.  
  
He moves in what he hopes in the right direction, working out from the rumbling, earth shaking explosions where the beach should be and where he wants to go in relation to it. 

There's a rushing sound and a small cry, he pulls his M1 to his shoulder, ready to fire, and comes around a ditch in time to see Guarnere appear from the dark and thrust his knife against the throat of another guy. 

"Fox company! I'm from fox!" The guy pants as Bill's knife presses harder and shouts;

"WHAT SIDE ARE YOU ON?!"

Joe laughs quietly and speaks up. 

"I thought the challenge was supposed to be Flash." 

Joes smiling for the first time tonight, feels a little guilty for smiling at all with the little F company guy getting up and disppearing into the black as soon as Bill stands up. 

He smiles wider because goddamn Bill Guarnere is in front of him, alive, unhurt, armed to the teeth and an almost blinding toothy grin plastered across he face.

"Joe, ya mad bastard, fancy meeting you here."

He reverses his knife and pats Joe's shoulder like he never expected see him alive again.  
  


Theres a sign post just barely visible a way away in the gloom which'll hopefully tell them where the hell they are.

He hums that silly old song 'mares eat oats and does eat oats' quietly as his fingers feel the indents of the sign's words. He had started singing it to Malark last night, after he'd recited that damned depressing poem for the hundredth time. Now he's in the middle of nowhere and its stuck in  _his_  head. 

"Jesus, Joe, shut up." Guarnere grumbles, his back to him, guarding them from the rest of the night.

He tries to read the words with his fingers, hoping Malarks okay and cursing himself for not realising how fucking dark it would be. He's memorised the maps and the sand tables and all those stupid  _not english_  names, but his brain won't put what the words looked like on a page together with what he's feeling on the sign. He's bad enough at reading english, how the fuck's he supposed to figure out french?

  
He hears  _click-clack_  behind him, but is too slow to do anything but turn and wonder if this is all he's going to do. 

_Face the enemy and pull a stupid face._

"Ste.-Mere-Eglise." Sweet Jesus, its Malark. "Three quarter miles. At least we arent that far off our DZ." 

He's grinning under curly hair and patchy grease paint at Joe and he gives him a small smile back, surprised by how glad he is to see him. Not that he was worried about Malark, the guy is as gentle as they come but fierce too. Joe wondered sometimes if Mal wouldn't destroy his heart doing all this stuff they had to do and see over here.

"You seen anyone else?" 

Malark nods his head in the direction of bushes on the far side of the road.

"S'arnt Lipton's over there with a couple of guys."  
  


Familiar faces come out of the black, the occasional far off explosion illuminates them for a moment before they fall back into darkness.

It's good to see them again, even if most of them are people he only kind of knows. Tiny Perconte is complaining loudly to Ranney, his shins, knees to boot tops, look like theyve been cut to ribbons. 

"..ruined my goddamn pants. Who the hell puts glass on top of their walls?"

"For protection. Keeps robbers and paratroopers out of the garden." Ranney quips as he nudges Perco's shoulder.

Popeye Wynn comes in from the dark followed by Winters and a guy Joes never seen before. Bill starts grumbling again, quietly under Winters and Lip discussing where they should be going now.

Joe gets where Bill's coming from, he doesn't know Winters that well, but sometimes Joe feels like maybe Winters is the sort of guy that should be leading. There's something about the guy that just feels right. 

So when Winters straightens up, and says move out, Joe figures any guy that can say that so confidently, in the middle of enemy territory and without a weapon, he's the guy you should follow.


End file.
